


Before the Storm

by alittlegloomy



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Camilla Hect is a top, F/M, First Time, Light Angst, Shameless Smut, it's canon compliant if you squint, right after The Table Fight scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:07:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25228042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlegloomy/pseuds/alittlegloomy
Summary: "So, I haven't misread things?""No, Warden."--------In which Camilla gets herself injured in a duel, she and Palamedes go back to their quarters to take care of it, and then actually don't take care of it at all.
Relationships: Camilla Hect/Palamedes Sextus
Comments: 11
Kudos: 74





	Before the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so, I haven't written in a million years???   
> This is hopefully resembles something even a little bit sensical.  
> It's also shameless smut. Just. A lot of smut.

Palamedes was no stranger to watching Camilla fight. 

He’d seen it countless times - it was hard not to when you’d been attached at the hip for the better part of a decade. He’d observed training sessions, sparring matches, all manner of  _ practice _ scenarios. And sure, there had always been an underlying, unspoken knowledge of the gravity of what she was doing, what she was working on, what she was training  _ for _ . Hell, she had even gone full attack dog at Gideon the first time they’d met, but even that was different, somehow. They hadn’t ever experienced something like this. The challenge had caused a rock to develop in his gut, a twisting, burning ball of anxiety. Camilla, ever the paragon of composure, looked entirely unphased and rose to the occasion without a moment’s hesitation. She was perfect. 

When he had told her to “Go loud,” he knew she would understand what that meant. They had always had an easy, natural understanding of the way one another worked, how they thought. He thought - no,  _ knew  _ \- that Camilla was brilliant, a trait that he had reminded her of time and time again, much to her chagrin. 

And ‘go loud’ she did. 

Camilla crashed into Marta the Second like a cannonball. She was an explosion. She crowded the other cavalier’s space and enforced it, metal clanging on metal, bodies moving so fast that you dare not risk a blink for fear you would miss something important. There was a look on the Second cavalier’s eyes that communicated something without her needing to utter a single word - they had underestimated the Sixth. That was stupid of them.

_ His _ cavalier was  _ beautiful _ . She was all raw power, acting on instinct, and he really couldn’t help but stare at her, the way she worked, how her body moved. She had been training for years, and it showed - the finesse and fluidity of her motions were an absolute work of art.

Camilla had cut a deep red gash down the other cavalier’s front, had likely fractured a few of Marta’s fingers with that knock with the hilt of her rapier, and had gotten a kick to her knee in, too.

The kick had been a mistake, though neither of them realized it quickly enough. He watched the two fight, grey eyes glinting behind his spectacles as he took in the details of what was unfolding before him, completely blind and deaf to anyone or anything around him other than the cavaliers, and perhaps Corona, though she was barely even able to be called an afterthought. 

He nearly called when Camilla’s rapier clattered to the table, when he saw that her arm was pierced through by Marta’s blade. The Second was a bundle of adrenaline, a crazed animal, and he did not trust them as far as he could throw them to not do something rash in their desperation. The sight of Camilla’s blood melting the grey of her sleeves to red caused him to stand from his chair, and his hands braced on the table as he leaned forward. He didn’t know how long he had been holding his breath for. 

He grimaced when Camilla ended the fight, dislocating Marta’s arm without a second’s hesitation. 

The rest of their time there that evening was a bit of a blur. He screamed himself hoarse, he knew that. The Ninth, in a shocking display of camaraderie, had stood up to the Third for them. He knew that. 

_ Death first to vultures and scavengers. _

He would be remembering that for a while. 

Unfortunately, he’d be remembering  _ Sex Pal _ for a while, too. 

\--

They were to meet back up with Nonagesimus in a few hours, the intention being that they could get a handle on Camilla’s injury, get cleaned up, and reconvene to keep watch over Dulcinea. Not that ‘getting a handle on her injury’ was particularly a priority for his cavalier, but the Ninth had insisted, and he had to admit that guarding the Lady Septimus could go  _ quite _ poorly without Cam being at her best. 

The walk back to their rooms after their conversation with the Fourth and the Ninth was a wordless one. She had been magnificent, and shameful as it would be to ever admit it, that had been…  _ distracting _ , for her necromancer. There was an electricity between them, now, and they both felt it, though chose to speak nothing of it. Maybe they were positioned a little bit closer together than usual as they walked, which was honestly quite the impressive feat given that they were usually attached at the hip. 

They’d finally made it back to the 6th Quarters, and no sooner had she finished throwing the deadbolts on it than he’d crowded her back against it, his hands finding her hips and her arms winding up around his shoulders. It was automatic, as easy as breathing, as if they’d done it a thousand times before. He was acutely aware of the wound in her arm, the way it had soaked through the handkerchiefs that she had wrapped it in again, and found himself moving carefully so as to not disturb or jostle it. 

“So,” he began, the slight waver to his tone a betrayal of physical confidence, “I haven’t misread things?” 

There was a flicker in her vision, something that would have been imperceptible to most, but Palamedes Sextus was not most. 

“No, Warden,” and the way she said it hurt. He could tell that she thought that he only wanted her for her body, and not for  _ her _ . Not for her wit, for her dry sarcasm, for her prowess with her blade and her insight on problems. Not for her companionship. 

Not for the fact that she was quite literally  _ everything _ to him. 

It had taken a long time, but he’d finally realized what he felt for her, only for it to seem very apparent that she did not feel the same. After all, he hadn’t historically given her a lot to go on, with how he’d followed after Dulcinea like a lost puppy dog. They were lifelong friends, and he had done a bang-up job of looking right past her for years, distracted by a person on the other side of a piece of paper. 

But even with his neglect, people had needs, and this was a natural progression - they were here, alone together, and would be for some time. They knew one another, had a chemistry and a comfort with one another that two people could really only obtain from years of closeness. People had needs, and they were natural choices for one another, at least here in Canaan house. 

He would take it. It was better than nothing. 

At the end of the day, he would still have her friendship.

When he leaned down to steal her lips with his own, she responded, pushing up on tiptoe to meet him. It was a reaffirmation of something he already knew, that a physical advance would be a welcome one, and he very quickly found himself melting into the contact. 

His hands, having previously rested on her hips with a gentleness that seemed to ask for a permission that had now been granted, snaked around to pull her against him fully. The kiss wasn’t their first one, he remembered, recalling the time just before they took their oaths and they had given it a try and stopped themselves before going any further, but this was… different. Gone was the childlike hesitation, the awkward, trembling hands, the tentative press of their lips. They sunk into one another like waves buffeting cliffs, grasping and pulling like they couldn’t get enough. When Camilla’s lips parted, Palamedes was there to rise to the challenge, nipping at her bottom lip and summoning a sound out of her that would make one of the Ninth nuns blush all the way to her toenails. They made quick work of their cloaks, yards of grey fabrics falling to heap on the floor at their feet. 

“Bed,” Camilla had said after a moment, breaking from her necromancer’s mouth for only a fraction of a second to do so. Palamedes may have missed it, entirely, if it weren’t accompanied by her hands moving from their position at the back of his neck to his chest, giving him an eager little push of encouragement while stepping in his direction to urge their momentum. He again noted that she was favoring her injured arm. 

He only stumbled a _ little  _ bit over the aforementioned grey fabric on the floor, a detail that caused Camilla to let out a quiet laugh against his lips. What he wouldn’t give to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life. He’d trip and fall head over ass a thousand more times, if it meant that he could hear her laugh like that again, and again, and again. 

The back of his legs hit the side of the bed, and there was an awkward moment of adjusting where he shifted to sit down on it. Camilla found her way up to straddle his hips - again, as though they had done it a thousand times before. She could feel him, then, as she settled down with her weight fully in his lap, and if there was any kind of shyness at the gained knowledge of how hard just  _ kissing _ her had gotten him, she didn’t show it. On the contrary, she eagerly drove her hips down, grinding against him and letting out a breathy sound into his mouth as she did so, her hands finally settling onto his shoulders for support. 

They stayed like that for a time, all tongues and teeth against one another’s lips, as she worked at rolling her hips down against him, each grind greedy, calculated.. His hands encouraged her pace, pulled her to him, and her breathing shifted to panting that shifted to gasps. He tried very,  _ very _ hard to not go absolutely drunk off of the sounds, the sensations, but  _ god _ she was making it hard. 

Perhaps a bad choice of mental phrasing, but he couldn’t un-think a thought. 

Camilla’s hands shifted. One positioned itself to be around his neck, fingers an incessant pressure at his cervical vertebrae. The other one, the injured one, moved down and curled to grip into the fabric of Palamedes’ shirt, all while the pace of her rocking herself down onto him grew more desperate, more frantic. The sounds against his mouth pitched up, too, until she finally had to break the kiss in favor of pushing their foreheads together, left arm gripping at his neck to hold him in place, and she found her peak in a trembling, breathless cry, eyes screwed shut and her thighs shuddering on either side of his hips. He could do little more than blink at her, mouth agape and dumbfounded, stars in his eyes as he took in the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. 

After a few moments, her breathing had stabilized, and she blinked her eyes open while leaning back. A blush was high on her cheeks, and her lips were kiss-swollen and pink. Her already dark eyes were somehow darker, blown out from the aftershocks of her pleasure and the lust that remained in its wake. 

“You’re…” He began to speak, but she quickly silenced him, crashing her lips down onto his in a motion that was a lot more teeth than he had expected. What he had been experiencing before was what he  _ would _ have described as passion, but it utterly paled in comparison to the hunger she exhibited, now. She was a hurricane, threatening to swallow him whole, but he rose to the challenge with earnest. 

The work of getting their shirts off was a graceless one; he was all long-limbs and needed to help her with working his arms out of the sleeves. He was sure he heard a seam pop, a problem that they would just have to deal with later. They had to have a sewing kit  _ somewhere _ in that bag of theirs. Her shirt was zippered all the way up, a detail he was thankful for because he  _ really _ didn’t think that he had the dexterity to handle buttons right then, and she made quick work of shoving the fabric off of her shoulders - wincing only the slightest bit when she had to work it over her right forearm - and tossed it away to some already-forgotten place on the floor. She made relatively quick work of her bandeau, as well, throwing it aside with just as much pomp and circumstance as she’d granted her shirt before pulling him back to kiss her once more. He’d only gotten a moment to look at the musculature of her abdomen, her shoulders, how every single ounce of her was sheer power, but what a moment it was. 

Skin to skin was heaven. Her skin, he noted, was hot. He had always known she ran warm, as that was a detail that was hard to miss when you shared a bed with someone, but feeling her chest against his, and the  _ heat _ radiating off of her made him starkly aware of it all at once. 

When she pulled away and began crawling off of his lap, he made an embarrassing sound, one that caused her to cock a brow and smirk. It was a familiar expression, one that she occasionally pulled out to tease him with when they were alone, but seeing it in this context was… well,  _ interesting _ . 

“Easy, Warden.” 

He realized, then, that neither of them had really spoken since this started. He might not have noticed at all if it weren’t for the fact that her voice was lower, as though it was honey turned to sound, thick and sweet. It made up for the fact that she had used his title, too,  _ now _ of all times. There normally would have been protests at that, and there  _ should _ have been protests at that, but he was distracted. Camilla had moved to be kneeling at the side of the bed, positioned between his legs (which must have spread at some point, apparently) and her hands were working at his belt, then the button, then the zipper to his trousers. As if on autopilot, he shifted to lift his hips and help make it easier for her to remove them, and blushed when deft fingers tugged his undergarments away at the same time, tossing the articles aside with just as much care as she had her own clothes.

When she reached forward to wrap her hand around him, the noise that came in response was undignified. He’d touched himself before, sure, but it was an entirely different sensation, having someone  _ else _ do it. Her fingers were just a little bit rough, calloused from years of working with swords and daggers and sticks and whatever the hell else she had piled on the cot, but it felt  _ good _ . Damn good. His mind was a blur, a very large part of him sure that there was no way that this was real. He was asleep, dreaming. Or maybe dead. Maybe the Second House had gone absolutely batshit after the fight, in reality, and they were both dead, now. If this was the afterlife, though, he supposed that was fine- 

The thoughts that had been rushing around in his head halted all at once. His brain completely shut off. 

Her mouth had slid down over him and he gasped, immediately falling to lay back flat on the bed as she went to work. His hands, though shaking, found their way to tangle in her hair, far less for any desire to control her pace and far more because he just wanted to  _ touch _ her. There was a short while where she sucked, experimentally, pulling him in further as if she was getting her grips about her, figuring out how much she could handle. It was a beautiful agony, too much sensation, and not enough all at once.    
He thought that, anyway, until she began bobbing her head.    
  
“ _ Fuck _ , Cam,” he managed, panting breaths giving way to the occasional gasp, a moan, a stammer of something incomprehensible. He began to roll his hips to meet her, causing a moment of adjustment where a hand suddenly appeared on his hip. After she had braced herself better, she was back to her rhythm in no time. “I-I’m-” 

He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, though, his body instead winding tight like a wire as he keened and fell apart with an airy whimper of her name, spilling into her mouth. 

Bless her, though, she took it in kind and continued to work at him throughout his climax until he was shuddering with every single movement, no matter how small, and  _ begging _ her to stop. He was sensitive, over-sensitive, and the stars in his vision threatened to blind him completely if she kept it up. When she finally did pull away, she did so by placing a firm kiss on his hipbone, the sheer intimacy of the gesture turning him from peach to scarlet.

When he managed to blink his vision back and prop himself up on his elbows, she was standing up, and already making work of her own trousers - she must have gotten a head start on that front, though, he thought to himself, noticing that a few fingers on her left hand glistened when the light caught them. 

He swallowed thickly, and turned from scarlet to crimson when he realized the implications of that. 

Pants and boots were kicked off and away, and he was met with the sight of Camilla Hect. All of her, unburdened by cloth or blade, and  _ just for him _ . He didn’t get long to relish in it, though, before she was crowding into his space, crawling over him and urging him up further on the bed wordlessly with a gentle push at his chest. He noted that she had used her left hand to do so, the wetness on her fingers transferring to his skin, and he quickly decided that he would rather not try to unpack why he liked that as much as he did. There was a moment where he was going to say something, but she stole the words right out of his mouth once again when she didn’t  _ stop _ crawling. 

No, she kept moving up his body until he was forced onto his back again, and her knees were positioned on either side of his head, her fingers carding through his hair. He caught on after a moment, and let her guide his head upwards as her hips moved down, and his tongue darted out to lick at her long and slow, tugging another one of those sweet, breathy noises out of her. The fingers in his hair tightened, nearly to the point that they  _ should _ have been painful, but it… wasn’t. Every little tug was electricity to his system, shocking him down his spine and settling right in between his thighs. 

He experimented with her, using his tongue to see what made her cry out and twitch the most, pinpointing those so that he could suckle at them. There were a few duds, as was to be expected, but she was good about shifting her hips, repositioning herself so that she was using him just the way she needed. 

He could have  _ sworn _ that he heard her moan out his name at one point, but it was so stuttered and quiet that he couldn’t be certain.    
  
He kept his mouth there, anyway, for good measure, an action that seemed to be a positive one, because he  _ definitely _ heard when she let out a quiet “Fuck,” under her breath when he did. The movement of her hips was picking up, and her breathing was hitching in that same, familiar way from before. His hands moved from where they had been grabbing at the sheets to instead hold her hips, more for the contact than for any need or desire to stop her from moving however it was she needed to.    
  
_ “Palamedes-” _ there was no questions about what he heard that time, and it was a sound that rocketed down him to settle  _ right _ between his legs. Her movements stopped completely, then, save for some telltale twitches and her driving her hips down to grind against him through her climax. Blood was rushing in his ears as he felt her, heard her, tasted her. God, she was  _ soaked _ , and whimpering when he continued licking and sucking as she came down from her peak, torturing her in the best possible way. Payback. She hadn’t called him by his name, yet, not since they’d entered their room, and it hadn’t even been until that very moment, when he finally heard it, that he even realized it.    
  
She rolled off of him to escape the overstimulation, panting with her eyes closed and her brows knit together, chest heaving with every inhale and exhale that she used to try and stabilize herself. When he shifted up to lay next to her, both of their bodies still sideways on the bed, she didn’t look at him but smiled open-mouthed regardless, reaching out with her hand blindly for his, which he gave her gladly. He pulled hers up to his mouth, gently kissing at her knuckles. 

“You’re incredible,” he breathed after a moment, and the look that she gave him as she finally opened her eyes was one that made him absolutely  _ ache _ . She seemed so… so sad, somehow, but she masked it quickly with another, smaller smile, and leaned forward to capture his lips with hers, again. She noticed her taste on his lips, and was only a little bit ashamed at how much he liked it.    
  
They stayed like that for a while, laying on their sides and kissing softly, hands wandering, before his hands found their way down her front between her thighs, her legs spreading without hesitation and his fingers pressing into the wet folds, there. He circled at her clit - easy to find, thanks to how swollen and sensitive she was, and she moaned against his mouth as she deepened the kiss hungrily, pushing her hips forward to egg him on.    
  
Rolling over on top of her, he urged her onto her back, settling between her legs while only disconnecting from the kiss for a moment. Her hands found their way to his hair again, holding him in place and kissing him as though it had been some great personal insult that he had dared to separate from her for even a second. He used this new angle to slip a single finger into her, curling experimentally from the start and relishing in the way he felt her walls tighten around him as she gasped. She was pliant for him, and pushing her hips to meet every thrust of his finger as a silent plea for ‘more’.    
  
The silence didn’t last long, though, a near-whispered “More” escaping her lips against his. He complied, because of course he did - he couldn’t say no to Camilla - and pulled out completely before replacing it with two. The slight stretch made her keen, her back arching, and he gave her a moment to adjust before he was fucking into her with his fingers again, curling in the way that he had discovered very early on pulled those noises out of her that he was growing so very fond of. 

This kept up for a short while, her hands eventually moving from his hair to his shoulders, blunt fingernails digging into his skin there, her head tipping back to lay on the mattress as he bit and sucked gently at the curved expanse of her neck. Her body bowed and bucked to him, and she was gasping with nearly every breath, a litany of moans and “fuck”s and whispers of his name, sharp and stuttered. Eventually, her hand (the left one, he managed to notice) wrapped around his wrist, effectively stopping him in his tracks as she caught her breath. He was confused, for a moment, before she finally managed:    
  
“Fuck me.”    
  
Short, sweet, and to the point. He really shouldn’t have expected anything different from his cavalier, but it still made his head spin, dizzying in the absolute best way possible. 

When he moved to pull his fingers out of her, she groaned low at the loss of the stretch, but pulled his hand up to her mouth. His mouth parted, a sharp intake of breath accenting the moment when she sucked his fingers in between her lips, tasting herself on him with a pleased hum, her eyes slipping shut again. This was a lot - seeing her on her back, spread out for him, his fingers in her mouth. She was  _ gorgeous _ . How had he not seen it, before? How had it taken him so long?    
  
Both hands had eventually wrapped themselves around his wrist, and it was both hands that she used to pull him away, a dastardly firm suck accompanying it. She smirked up at him, and that smirk turned into a grin, as she licked her lips. 

“Well, Warden? I’m waiting.” 

He rolled his eyes, at that, sitting back on his heels and running his hand down her neck, her sternum, taking a small detour at her chest to play at her breast, circling his thumb on a nipple that pebbled delightfully quickly under the contact. “Don’t call me that when we’re like this,” he said after a moment, when her breath was catching in her throat again and her eyes had slipped to half-lidded hunger once more. 

Finding his positioning was challenging, at first. He knew the science of it, of course, knew  _ what _ to do, but it was an entirely different thing to put it to practice. Especially when he was putting it to practice with  _ Camilla _ , who was splayed out before him like a masterpiece, flushed and needy and just for  _ him _ . Still, he did find it eventually, and when his eyes flicked up to her face as though to wordlessly ask for permission, she understood. A quick nod and a small, insistent pull of him with her heels to his lower back was all he needed, and he sunk into her in a slow, steady thrust that tore noises from them in unison. 

She felt like heaven. Better than heaven. She was warm, and wet, and she was clenching around him in a way that threatened to ruin him entirely too quickly. “ _ Camilla _ ,” he breathed out, needing to rest his head down on her shoulder for a moment as he gathered his composure, got used to the feeling of her wrapping around him so completely. The sounds of her breathing in his ear, the quiet half-moans that came with every exhale, were the sweetest sort of music he had ever experienced. He could get drunk on that sound, could listen to it every minute of every day for the rest of his existence, and not get sick of it. She was perfect, in every sense of the word, and he intended to show her how much he thought that. 

Whether they had been like that for five seconds or five minutes, he did not know, but when he propped himself back up onto his palms with arms on either side of her head, the forlorn expression she’d worn earlier had been replaced with a hungry one. It was damn near  _ predatory _ , the look in her eyes, like she wanted to swallow him whole. He pulled out of her, almost entirely, before thrusting back in again, burying himself in her completely in a way that had her moan pitch up into a true and genuine cry, and he almost would have worried that he’d hurt her if it hadn’t been accompanied by her hands shooting up to claw at his shoulders again. That was all the encouragement he needed, he decided, and he started rocking into her with steady, sharp thrusts, the bed rocking with them. Her hands moved from his shoulders, to his neck, to his arms, until finally one remained on his shoulder and one grasped at the blanket beneath her, fingers tightening in it as her eyes shut and she threw her head back. If she’d been trying to stay quiet before, she certainly wasn’t now, and he found himself chancing a glance over at their bedroom door to make doubly certain that the deadbolts were locked. They were. 

His eyes raked over her. She was flushed bright down her neck, now, which was an especially pretty sight when it was accented with the light little bruises he had left there, and her breasts rolled with every thrust. He counted a couple of moles on her that he’d never seen before, the sort that were flat like freckles but too dark, too large. One particular one, he decided, was his favorite - it was right next to her left nipple, on the outside, and he leaned his head down (an awkward angle, but he managed) to kiss it before capturing said nipple in his mouth and sucking for a moment, a motion that had her arching underneath him. 

“God, Camilla, if you could see yourself,” he managed to say as her hips bucked up when he pulled away. She didn’t open her eyes to look at him, but he could tell she was listening. “If you had any idea how beautiful you look…” Something told him that something in her  _ wanted _ to protest, but she didn’t. “...spread out like this for me.  _ Just _ for me. Fuck, you’re gorgeous. You’re incredible, Camilla. My Camilla.” 

At that, her eyes shot open, and for a split second he thought he saw fear there, but it melted away as quickly as it appeared. She licked her lips and pushed him, hands bracing against his shoulders and forcibly flipping him over onto his back - and, in turn, forcing him out of her, a loss that made it so that it was  _ his _ turn to whine - before she was straddling his waist again. She leaned down and kissed him, hands on his cheeks to hold him in place as she poured more passion into him through her lips than he had ever imagined a person was capable of. It somehow forced the world to spin around him and grounded him all at once, and he found himself leaning up, pushing into it to try and get more, somehow, as if there was anything more  _ to  _ get. 

When she pulled away, he made a sound at the loss, but that sound quickly gave way to a low moan, and he flopped back completely on the mattress again. That was because her pulling from the kiss came with her shifting to move further down, from straddling his waist to his hips. Her left hand braced on his chest as the other reached down between them to hold him in place for her so she could sink onto him, her eyes closing and her mouth falling open with a long exhalation as she pushed down to take him in entirely. Fuck, he was  _ deep _ , filling her up so perfectly, and he couldn’t help himself from bucking his hips up minutely at the sensation, a motion that had her squeak. 

He glanced up at her at that, and they shared a moment where he smirked and she gave him a familiar ‘Don’t-you-fucking-dare’ expression, which of course prompted him to do it again. 

They set a strange, almost competitive motion, then. She had both of her hands on his chest, and he used the opportunity to smooth his hands up her thighs, her hips, her waist, until finally they settled on her breasts where he could pinch and toy at and tug at her nipples, playing to see what more delightful little sounds he could rip from her. 

When he was about to open his mouth to say something to her, again, she happened to be watching him, and he could only breathe out a “God, Cam,” before she had leaned forward, looking him dead in the eyes as she pressed two fingers onto his lower lip. In spite of himself, his tongue darted out to meet them, and when she pushed them in, he sucked eagerly, humming around them as she moaned in turn. 

It was delightfully filthy, what they were doing. Their hips collided over and over again, desperate and wanton, her fingers on his tongue and him sucking in earnest, their voices echoing what little they could off of the walls and the books covering them. One of his hands moved down between them so that a thumb could rub at her clit - he was a quick learner, it seemed.   
It wasn’t long before her nails were digging little marks into his chest, and the pain gave him the most  _ wonderful _ spark, something he decided that he would very much like to pursue further next time. He didn’t dwell on the fact that he assumed there would be a ‘next time’. His hips thrusted up to her in short bursts, and she trembled, her walls fluttering and tightening around him as she came, fingers in his mouth going rigid with the rest of her. Her head fell forward and her mouth fell open as she cried out - she wasn’t trying to restrain her noises even a little bit, now, and that in combination with how  _ tightly _ she had locked around him had him cresting in turn, his hands hurriedly moving to grasp at her hips and hold her down against him, her grinding her hips down in circles as he did. 

She pulled her hand away from his mouth, then, and collapsed down onto his chest, arms trembling as she did, not bothering to move to pull him out. She was panting, and it was only then that he realized so was he, and his hands moved from her hips when he regained even the most minor amount of motor function. One moved to settle on her back, fingertips tracing gentle circles there, and the other was placed on her head, holding her close to him. They stayed like that for what could have honestly been hours, and her breathing had slowed to a point that he was genuinely concerned she may have fallen asleep. A gentle tap of his fingers, though, and she raised her head, looking up at him with a soft, satiated smile. 

That expression was a shot directly to his heart. She looked incredible, all spent like this, her hair a little askew, and her eyes sparkling in the light. He’d always liked her eyes, but this was like seeing them for the first time. 

“Camilla, I-” he started, but she reached up to press a finger to his lips.    
  
“Shh,” she replied simply, and it quickly became clear that she wanted to just relish in this moment for a little while longer. He was happy to comply, and propped his head up a bit with one arm while his free hand went back to her hair, pushing through the locks and simply reveling in the moment for a while. 

Finally, she sat up, and the feeling of loss as she rolled off of him was damn near agony, but she made up for it by leaning down and pressing a kiss to his lips once again. 

“Come on,” she started, crawling off of the bed and dropping her feet down onto the floor, offering him her left hand to help him up in turn. They really needed to take a closer look at her injury, make sure it was okay - “Let’s get cleaned up.” 

There was that mischievous glint in her eyes, again, and his mind went blank.

He took her hand, and she led him off to their adjacent bathroom, neither of them bothering to grab their clothes. He triple-checked the locks as they walked by, for good measure. 

**Author's Note:**

> this was so long I am so sorry, thank you for reading <3


End file.
